E. Bart Tarbet

I began training in medical microbiology (infectious diseases) at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Medical Center in 1992. After completing my degree at LSU, I worked for 12 years in the  veterinary vaccine industry, developing vaccines for emerging diseases in animals.

In 2008, I joined the Institute for Antiviral Research at USU and my research expanded to include developing animal models of human infectious disease to evaluate therapeutics and vaccines. In 2009, the influenza H1N1 pandemic occurred, and we were part of the NIH  pandemic response. In 2014, a strain of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) emerged that caused a polio-like disease in children. We developed a small animal model to evaluate experimental therapies.

In 2020, we received funding to develop an animal model for SARS-CoV-2 infection that  progressed to COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 was the fifth emerging disease I have worked on since  starting graduate school. In the past, my lab focused on experimental therapeutics for respiratory infections such as influenza virus and COVID-19. Our work on EV-D68 led to additional models for enteroviruses, including EV-71, echovirus 11, and echovirus 30. Due to these unique models, my laboratory is becoming a research center to develop therapies to treat enterovirus infections in young children.